Workers Friday were busy hanging the last remaining paintings by Southwest Florida artists, dusting counters and wiping the rare fingerprint from otherwise pristine windows as the building's interior was readied for its public debut.

Thomas Perigo, Sarasota Memorial's director of architecture and construction, said nurses, support staff, physicians, orthopedic patients, wives of heart patients, mothers of babies born prematurely — in short, just about anyone with an interest in the facility — were asked their opinions along the way.

"We talked to people with skin in the game," Perigo said Friday. "We mocked up the new rooms first, so people could check them out — the floors, the paint colors, the equipment, how much natural lighting came in through the shades."

The result of more than a decade of planning and construction, the new tower takes the place of some tired buildings on the hospital campus dating from the 1950s.

Hospitals throughout Florida are struggling to update, appeal to consumers and otherwise differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive health care market.

Patients want privacy

One feature clearly coveted and sometimes demanded by more patients: Privacy. About 70 percent of the new rooms at the tower are private, and those typically will be filled first.

"Most of the time, the semi-private rooms are going to be used as nice, big private rooms," Perigo said.

All rooms feature sofa-beds with extra storage for family members' belongings. Family lounges are on each floor, as well. Large windows stream sunlight; some offer views of Sarasota Bay or the hospital courtyard below, with plush greenery, flowers and water features. Levels 1 and 2 of the tower include the hospital lobby, information, registration, preadmission testing and surgery check-in. Level 3 is for maintenance. Level 4 features labor and delivery suites, 5 hosts the Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and 6 is the Mother-Baby Unit.

Level 7 and 8 are for cardiac units and Level 9 is dedicated to orthopedics.

Orthopedics patients will move into the new facility on Monday, with mother/baby units moving Sept. 24.

Cardiac acute and cardiac progressive units will relocate to the tower in October, with labor and delivery and neonatal and intensive care units moving in early November.

When all the moves have been completed, the hospital will feature three "dedicated" entrances. When patients receive instructions for surgery or labor and delivery, for example, they will be told to look for a specific color-coded entrance. Valet parking will be available for those coming to the emergency room, or for surgery patients who drive themselves to the hospital.

On Friday, hospital staff collected items for a time capsule, scheduled to be buried for 50 years. Included are a hospital photo from 1925, a stethoscope which is expected to soon be outdated, a Sarasota Memorial T-shirt, and a copy of today's Herald-Tribune.

All day Friday, physicians in scrubs, nurses and other hospital staff members stepped into a giant snowglobe with a large print of the Courtyard Tower in the background for 5-inch-by-7-inch commemorative photos.

The snowglobe was chosen as part of an advertising campaign to let the people know the project, totaling $250 million with campus improvements, was underway.

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